Joe Peters

by Cry Silent Tears

  When the daylight finally returned and I poked my nose out round the door, the countryside was just as deserted as it had been when I went to bed. The only sounds came from the wind and birds in the trees. I decided to explore and went to hide my backpack in some nearby woods, not wanting to carry it around but fearing that some workmen might come to the hut during the day and find it if I left it there. It contained all the possessions I had in the world so I couldn’t afford to lose it.

  My newfound friends were in school during the day so I passed the long hours playing on my own in the woods. I enjoyed my newfound freedom but I’d finished all the food I’d brought with me from the school dinner room and hunger pains were growling ominously in my stomach like an approaching thunderstorm. All day I was looking forward to seeing John and the other kids when they came out again after school and I was waiting outside their houses for ages before they finally appeared. When John and his sister emerged through their gates I could see that they were looking for me, hoping I would be there, eager to talk, which was a nice feeling.

  ‘What house are you staying at?’ John asked as we sat waiting for the others to join us. ‘Because we know everyone in the area.’

  ‘Over there,’ I said, waving in a vague direction, eager to change the subject.

  ‘But last night you said it was over there,’ he protested, obviously puzzled and intrigued at the same time.

  ‘It’s a farm over the bridge,’ I said, because I had passed several in my journey.

  ‘Which one?’ his sister was intrigued now too. ‘Our mum and dad know all the farmers.’

  Obviously they had been talking about me at home and their parents had shown an interest. I began to feel a little panicked but forced myself to stay calm.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, unable to think of any way out. ‘I’ll be straight with you. Promise me you won’t say anything to anyone?’

  They nodded solemnly, their eyes wide in anticipation of hearing something amazing. Everyone loves to be told a secret.

  ‘I’m a runaway.’

  It was the first time I had actually said the word out loud and the dramatic sound of it quite surprised me.

  They both gasped and there was a moment’s silence as they took in this astounding fact, followed by a torrent of questions.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Who have you run away from?’

  ‘Where are you sleeping?’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  I explained that my mum hurt me and was threatening to kill me.

  ‘If they find me,’ I said, ‘the police will take me back home and she will really hurt me.’

  I made them swear over and over again not to tell anyone, not even the other members of their gang – but not surprisingly it was too juicy a piece of news for them to be able to keep it to themselves and within five minutes of turning up all the other kids in the group knew about it. I guess every child must dream about running away from home at one time or another, and now they had met someone who had actually done it and they wanted to be part of the adventure themselves. Football was forgotten – they just wanted to sit around and talk and plan my future with me. Everyone was talking at once.

  ‘Okay,’ John said after a while, ‘we’ll make a pact. We won’t tell anyone, and we’ll look after you.’

  We moved further away from the houses to be sure we wouldn’t be overheard and they got me to sit down and tell them more about the things Mum did to me. They listened with their jaws hanging open. I didn’t tell them about anything sexual, just the beatings and about being locked in a room with no light or food for days on end. It was obvious none of them had ever even realized there was such a thing as child abuse; none of them could even imagine having a mother like mine. She must have sounded like a character from a horror movie, which pretty much sums up what she was like. I could see they were deeply shocked and that they truly did want to do something to help.

  ‘So where did you stay last night?’ John’s sister wanted to know

  I pointed down the track to the hut.

  ‘But wasn’t it really cold in there?’

  I shrugged and nodded. ‘It was a bit.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do.’ She was taking charge of the situation now. ‘We’ll go home and steal you some blankets.’

  ‘No, I’ve got a better idea,’ John overrode her in his enthusiasm. ‘We’ll sneak you into our house and you can hide out under my bed. We can bring you downstairs and feed you whenever my mum and dad go out.’

  I was really beginning to panic now. If we started doing all these things it wouldn’t be long before a grown-up suspected what was going on and asked some serious questions. These kids didn’t look like the sorts that would stand up well under interrogation. They were treating the whole thing as a glorified game, like any child from a normal background would, but to me it was deadly serious, a matter of life and death. If I was caught and taken home now I was pretty sure Mum would lose the plot completely and might very well kill me in her next explosion of temper.

  ‘I don’t think that would work,’ I said, not wanting to sound ungrateful. ‘But I am quite hungry.’

  ‘Okay,’ John said, jumping up, ‘we’ll get you a feast.’

  ‘Don’t go mad,’ I said. ‘Don’t take anything anyone will miss. We don’t want to arouse their suspicions.’

  Despite me pleading with them to show some restraint they had decided what they wanted to do and were too excited to be reasoned with. They all dashed off back to their homes, telling me to wait for them in my hut.

  Once inside their houses they went mad, emptying their parents’ cupboards, bringing me down armfuls of bedclothes and carrier bags full of food, turning the hut into a little home from home, like a cross between a children’s camp and Santa’s grotto. Not all of it had been completely thought through – such as the tins of baked beans that came without a tin opener – but there was still enough for me to eat my fill as they babbled on about their plans for my future and how they were going to care for me and hide me. It felt a bit as though I was a pet dog again, but at least now I was a cherished family pet, not a despised one.

  ‘You’ll be our best runaway friend,’ they said as they proudly showed me everything they had stolen for me, ‘and we’ll never tell anyone that you’re here.’

  On their record so far I didn’t have too much faith in them being able to keep such an exciting secret from their families for long, but it still felt nice to be the centre of so much friendly attention and I was grateful for the bedclothes and the food. The contrast between the way they were looking after me in that hut, and the way Mum and Amani and the rest of them had looked after me in the past, when I was just a small child, touched me and made me feel sad at the same time. Why didn’t my own family want to look after me like this? I decided to stop worrying about things I could do nothing about and just enjoy my good fortune for a few days before moving on. All the bad stuff was behind me now, I reminded myself. I didn’t need to think about it any more.

  My new friends were obviously nervous about leaving me on my own that night and didn’t want to tear themselves away and go back to their houses. I expect they half wanted to camp out with me and share the adventure for a bit longer, but as it grew later I was getting increasingly nervous that their parents would wonder where they were and would come looking for them. I begged them to go back home before that happened.

  ‘What if some strange man comes past and hurts you?’ John’s sister asked and the others all agreed.

  ‘They won’t,’ I assured them, desperately wanting them to go now. ‘It’s dark enough, no one will see me.’

  ‘Wild animals might eat you,’ someone else suggested.

  ‘No, really,’ I insisted. ‘I’ll be all right.’

  I kept on trying to convince them it was safe to leave me, stressing again how important it was that they didn’t tell another soul about me. They promised and I
know they did intend to do their best. Eventually they reluctantly agreed to leave me and I settled down under the blankets for a warmer night’s sleep than the night before, my stomach feeling comfortably full.

  For the next few days my friends came to see me after school each evening, bringing more and more supplies, far more than I needed or could actually eat. On the fifth night John took me to one side and put forward a new proposition.

  ‘Why don’t you come and live with us?’ he suggested, and I could tell he’d been thinking about it a lot, probably talking it through with his sister. ‘You could be my older brother. If I tell my mum and dad that your mum is nasty to you they could adopt you and you could stay with us permanently.’

  I couldn’t deny that it sounded like a tempting option, but I was old enough and experienced enough to know that the chances of something like that happening were less than slight. I knew Mum would never give me up unless someone paid her enough money to compensate her for her financial losses. I was worth too much to her in potential earnings and she wouldn’t want to give me the chance of being happy anyway. I also couldn’t imagine that these kids’ parents would be too thrilled about taking in a stray child with learning difficulties and a history of behavioural problems just because their own children asked them to.

  ‘No,’ I said, more vehemently than I had intended. ‘I’m happy here. Honestly.’

  That night John decided he needed to get me some hot food for a change. While sitting at the family dinner table he started secretly putting roast potatoes into a bag and then announced he needed to go to the toilet. He dashed down to the hut to give them to me before they went cold but when he returned to the dinner table ten minutes later his mum wanted to know where he’d been.

  ‘I’ve been in the toilet,’ he lied.

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ she said, ‘because I looked. I saw you outside.’

  ‘There was a stray dog out there,’ he said, his brain racing to find a convincing cover story. ‘I felt sorry for him.’

  Despite his quick cover-up, his mother’s suspicions had been raised. She had already noticed how many items had been disappearing from the kitchen cupboards over the previous few evenings and obviously felt that she was onto something. She certainly didn’t believe that her son was feeding a stray dog with tins of beans, loaves of bread, bottles of milk and packets of cereal. The questions went on and on until eventually my friend’s inability to tell bare-faced lies to his own mother got the better of him and he confessed the whole story. I suspect he was relieved to get it off his conscience; he wasn’t the sort of boy who would have been comfortable lying to his parents, even if it was in what he thought was a good cause.

  I had no idea of any of this as I settled down to sleep for another night in my hut. The first I knew that something was wrong was when I was woken later that night by the sound of footsteps outside, crunching through the shingle on the track. Immediately alert I threw off the stolen bedclothes and knelt by the door, peering out through a crack, my heart pounding as I tried to assess the danger. I could see the beam of a torch coming towards me. The figure holding it looked too tall to be one of the kids, and the footfall was too heavy, more like the scrunch of an adult man’s boots. Not sure what to do next, I leaned my whole weight against the door, wedging it with my foot, buying myself a few seconds to think. I assumed it must be a railway maintenance man doing some night work and I began to plan how I would get out the door and past him before he had a chance to grab me and before any of his mates turned up.

  The footsteps stopped directly outside the door and a thin slither of torchlight came in through the crack making me instinctively dodge back out of its path.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ a man’s voice enquired. ‘Joe, is that you?’

  Now I was confused; how did the stranger in the dark know my name?

  ‘I’m a police officer.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ I shouted, unable to think of anything intelligent to say in the circumstances. I was thinking about the policeman who used to come to my cellar and to Douglas’s house and shivering at the prospect of being arrested and falling back into their hands.

  ‘There’s a few people worried about you,’ he persisted. His voice sounded kind and concerned but I’d been fooled like that before and I wasn’t falling for it again – not now I’d had a taste of freedom.

  ‘Like fuck they are!’ I shouted.

  ‘Come on; open the door, Joe, please. I need to see if you’re okay.’

  ‘I am, so fuck off.’

  ‘But I need to see for myself that you’re all right. Please open the door. I don’t want to have to kick it in and hurt you because that wouldn’t be nice, would it? I really am a policeman and if you open the door a little you’ll be able to see my uniform. These people up here are your friends and they’re worried about you.’

  ‘Fucking grasses!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t want to go back. Please, can’t you just leave me alone? Forget you even heard about me. Please.’

  ‘I can’t lad, no, sorry. My duty is to make sure you are protected.’

  I could tell he wasn’t going to change his mind and just go away. If I stayed where I was, I was trapped. If he came in, I would be cornered and it would be harder to get away than if I was outside. I made a decision and opened the door, letting him think he had won me over with his reasonableness and his promise of protection. I stepped out with my bag over my shoulder and he took a firm hold of my wrist to make sure I didn’t do a runner. I didn’t like the feeling after being free for a few days; it reminded me of all the other times I had been gripped by adult hands and pulled in one direction or another, but I didn’t struggle. It wouldn’t have been worth it and he would only have tightened his hold on me. He was too strong for me to be able to wriggle free; I just had to hope that an opportunity would arise for me to get away before he had me under lock and key. As we made our way up towards the road we had to get over a steep bank. I could tell he was having difficulties, his feet sliding out from under him and only one hand free to support himself when he was in danger of falling.

  ‘You don’t have to hold me that hard,’ I protested, realizing it was going to be difficult for him to negotiate this obstacle with me attached to him. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘You’re not going to run now, are you?’ he asked, sounding a bit doubtful at the prospect of loosening his grip. ‘You promise me?’

  ‘No, of course not. I promise you.’ Everyone else made promises that they didn’t intend to keep, I thought, so why should I be any different? I was willing to do anything I could to stay out of Mum’s clutches.

  The moment I felt his fingers slacken I tore free and was off into the night. I could hear him shouting after me. ‘Joe, come back here.’ But I didn’t turn round and in my fear and desperation I must have put on a real burst of speed, despite tripping several times on the many unseen obstacles in my path, because I had soon pulled away into the darkness. I left him trailing along behind until eventually even the beam of his torch had disappeared from sight. It’s surprising how much energy fear will give you when you need it. I found out later that the police searched for me for the next couple of days, and I did see the odd police car circling around as I watched from my next hiding place, but they didn’t seem to be putting their whole hearts into it. I guess they thought I would turn up sooner or later, that I wouldn’t have the necessary skills to survive for long in the wild on my own.

  Once I was confident I had got away from him I slowed down, stumbling round in circles through the woods until I came into a deserted summer campsite. There I found an empty log cabin that had been locked up for the winter. The lock on the door was flimsy and I managed to force my way in with one hefty kick. It was more comfortable than the previous hut had been; there was even a bed, which I threw myself down onto, my heart pounding from the exertions of the night. The cabin was dry and clean, but it was still cold once I had cooled down again after the running. All my bedclothes had been le
ft behind in the hut and I didn’t think it would be wise to go back for anything the next day in case the police were still watching it. I imagined that the kids’ families would probably have reclaimed their property by then anyway. I didn’t know how long it would be before someone came to open the cabin up for the summer, but I thought it would do as a hideout until the police had stopped bothering to look for me at least.

  I stayed in the cabin for several days, living off the remains of the food supplies that I had been keeping in my bag, rationing them out carefully to make them last, seeing no one. The following Sunday I was wandering around the empty campsite for yet another day, keeping myself entertained as best I could. The site had given me a lot of space and quiet to be alone with my own thoughts. I was used to being on my own, so that wasn’t a problem. I was content to mooch around looking for things to salvage and things to eat with nobody else to interfere with me or boss me about. I wasn’t giving the future too much serious thought, but I suppose I imagined I would just keep moving from place to place over the coming years, scrounging enough food to survive as I went, maybe getting the odd job here and there for pocket money. Being alone in the woods was so much better than being at home, or spending the weekend at Douglas’s house, that I didn’t give much thought to anything else. If I let myself think about it, I missed Pete and I sometimes wondered what was happening to my brother Thomas. We were never bosom buddies the way I was with Pete, but I knew he had a bad time at home and I worried about him.