That didn’t stop men from picking her up in the pub once Amani had gone from the scene, although I dare say they had mostly had a few drinks by the time they actually decided to go home with her. She used to take them straight up to her bedroom and we could often hear them going at it. We would all try to stay out of the way but occasionally we would see the men sneaking out in the morning and some of them were about as rough as it’s possible to imagine. I think she would get so drunk at night she lost all sense of judgement about those sorts of things. But then Amani hadn’t been any sort of oil painting, so maybe looks didn’t matter to her.
When I agreed to come back home she said that I could share a bedroom with Ellie and Thomas, separating me from Larry and Barry just as she had promised. That seemed a good start. It turned out to be true that Amani had gone, and so had all trace of Uncle Douglas and his other seedy friends. As far as I could tell Amani had gone back to my Aunt Melissa and his relationship with Mum had just dissolved. The others told me that she had tried to get some commitment from him when she found she was pregnant by him but he had felt like she was trying to trap him so he had walked away. I don’t think he even came around for the birth of the new baby. I certainly never saw him again.
Mum did seem to be trying really hard to overcome the nasty side of her personality and often apologized to us for the mistakes she had made in the past at moments when she was feeling sorry for herself – particularly when she’d had a few too many drinks. I tried to suppress all the memories that I carried, wanting to start again and not to be reminded about any of it, but it was hard sometimes. The fact that we were living in a different house helped because it meant I didn’t have to be in the same rooms where I had been imprisoned and tortured, helping to avoid the stirring up of my blackest thoughts.
To begin with I allowed myself to believe that she actually meant what she was saying and that she was genuinely sorry for everything she had done, but then it dawned on me that the real reason she wanted me back was to have another potential breadwinner in the house. Over the years I worked as a ‘porn star’ she had been funding her drinking from the money that Amani was bringing in from Uncle Douglas and the rest, but now that had gone she was broke. She needed to get as many of her children working as she could, and persuade them to hand over their earnings to her, in order to keep enough cash coming in.
The first week that I was home went quite well as she tried to lull me into a sense of security, then in the second week she started talking about how she wanted me, Thomas and Ellie to start earning our keep. I was immediately on my guard, fearful of what she might have planned for us and ready to make a run for it the moment anyone like Douglas showed up at the door. Larry and Barry were too bone idle to do anything and she didn’t seem to think she could force them any more now they were in their mid twenties, so she kept up the pressure on us, suggesting things we could do. I was shocked by how normal, honest and sensible the suggestions seemed to begin with.
She started by sending us out to wash people’s cars, knocking on doors and charging a pound a car. We got really keen and were doing twenty or thirty cars a day quite quickly, excited by the amount of money we managed to fill our pockets with by the end of a hard day’s work. The moment we got home, of course, she would take the money straight off us and head down the pub with it. We were really working hard and I began to resent losing the money so quickly, particularly when she wasn’t using it to buy anything for any of us.
‘Why am I giving you everything I earn?’ I asked one day, having been lulled into a false sense of security by her apparent change of character. ‘I don’t mind giving you a bit, but we should be allowed to keep some of what we earn.’
The moment the words were out of my mouth I realized my mistake because her fist punched hard into my face, sending me spinning across the room. All the memories came erupting back to the surface as I tried to pull myself together and clear my head. They threatened to overwhelm me and for a second I was going to retaliate with any weapon I could find. But something stopped me. I don’t know if it was because I feared I would make her even angrier, or if I was actually able to rationalize the situation and realized I would only make my own situation worse. Instead of hitting her back, I walked straight out of the house and returned to the care home, telling them that Mum had assaulted me again. They could see the bruise deepening on my face, making my eye swell until it was almost closed, but when they went round to see her she made up a long story about how I had been being disruptive and smashing up the house and that she had had to restrain me. To my horror they believed her yet again.
I admit that my behaviour over the previous months in the homes had not done anything to help my reputation so it was probably easier than it should have been for the authorities to accept that I was just up to my old tricks again. As far as they were concerned, my mother had done her best to put me on the straight and narrow, only to be met by ingratitude and violence. I stayed at the care home anyway because I refused to go back and I was getting a bit too big to be easily forced to do anything I didn’t want to do.
A month later Mum came round again trying to persuade me to return home for another attempt at reconciliation. For the whole year that I was fifteen, I kept going back and forth, each time hoping that it would be different and each time being disappointed. Her mood swings were even more unpredictable than they had been before. Whereas when I was small she was always angry and always aggressive towards me, she now had moments when she was all sweetness and light, but it was impossible to predict when those moments would disappear and she would be back to screaming and punching and dragging me or Thomas around by our hair. Despite her arthritis she was still a formidable force when she was angry and something stopped me from fighting back with all my strength. Despite all the threats I had issued over the years, I always held back from actually hitting my own mother, which meant she still had the power to rule over me as long as I was in her house.
As soon as her mood blackened Larry and Barry would appear at her side to assist her in whatever beating she was administering, just as they always had, like two evil henchmen, never wanting to miss out on any possible blood-letting. Still I kept hoping that she would eventually stop picking on me and would start treating me the same way she treated them. I kept on giving her one more chance, despite the endless disappointments. Larry and Barry were both very hard men by that time and even she wouldn’t have tried taking them on beyond the occasional passing clip round the ear to remind them who was the ultimate boss.
At least I had the freedom to come and go from the house as and when I wanted, and to make friends wherever I chose. At one stage I got to know an old boy called McDermott, who used to run a little garage down the road, a bit like the one Dad had worked in. He must have felt sorry for me or something because he spent a lot of time chatting to me and letting me help him with odd jobs, giving me the occasional pound here and there or buying me a McDonalds for my lunch. Once I felt completely comfortable with him I would accept invitations to go back to his house for lunch, which was always really nice and companionable. I felt he was treating me as a fellow adult. In reality he was probably trying to keep me occupied and out of trouble, but if so then that was kind of him too. He would be happy to let me talk about Dad all the time, something I still wanted to do, just like when I was younger and kept obsessively drawing pictures of him on fire. There weren’t many people who I could do that with because I would never have dared to mention Dad’s name at home for fear of the repercussions.
One day McDermott and I dropped in to visit a mate of his on the way back from our lunch and I needed to use the toilet so I popped up to the bathroom. While I was in there I spotted a gold sovereign ring lying on the side of the basin and slipped it into my pocket. It was such a stupid thing to do, more of a habit than anything else because Mum was always encouraging us to nick anything we could. I would never have taken anything from McDermott himself because he was my friend, but this seem
ed like fair game because it was a stranger’s house. The plan in our house was always to try to turn everything into money so a couple of days later I went down to a jeweller’s in town and asked them to buy the ring. The jeweller took it from me and examined it carefully.
‘This is stolen,’ he said without giving it back. ‘I’m not buying this.’
‘No it’s not,’ I lied. ‘It’s my dad’s and he’s passed it on to me.’
‘It’s not your dad’s.’ He was obviously completely confident and wasn’t taking any notice of anything I was saying. ‘It’s stolen.’
He wouldn’t give it back to me and I realized then that McDermott must have been into the local shops to tip them off and ask them to keep an eye out for the ring, assuming I would be in with it sooner or later. Looking up, I saw that the shop was fitted with a CCTV camera so I knew there was no way I would be able to deny that it was me who had brought the ring in. McDermott would know for sure that I had stolen his mate’s property. I felt so ashamed and angry with myself.
Sure enough, McDermott turned up on the doorstep at our house the next day to tell me how disappointed he was. He said they weren’t calling the police but that I wasn’t to come round to the garage again. I was as bitterly disappointed with my behaviour as he was. He had been the first adult who had taken the time to be my friend without being paid by the social services, the first to treat me decently without wanting something from me in return and I’d messed it up by betraying him. As usual Mum gave me a beating for being stupid enough to get caught, but I felt I deserved it anyway for being so treacherous towards McDermott and so careless of his friendship. Yet again I had proved that Mum was right and I was a bad lot. I still feel guilty about stealing that ring, even to this day.
It is hard to shake off the conditioning of years. Mum had always encouraged us to take whatever we could and as we got older she would send us out on any number of organized scams. Back when I was fourteen, for instance, she had decided the whole family should become regular churchgoers. She had grown friendly with a local vicar, who she’d met in the pub. She told Thomas and me that we were to go and help him to look after the Sunday school kids and take the collections in church during the services.
‘If you can,’ she told us, ‘put your hand into the collections and stick some money into your pocket. Try to get as much as you can.’
Her request didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary to us, it was just the way things were. That didn’t mean, however, that we weren’t scared of getting caught, knowing that she would give us a good battering if we were. For the first couple of weeks we were far too frightened to do anything, but she kept on and on at us and in the end we gave in, shoving handfuls of money down our underpants when the vicar wasn’t looking, shocked to find how easily we got away with it. Regular members of the congregation used to put in envelopes with their name and their donations written on the outside and cash on the inside, so we knew which were the big ones. Some of them used to give up to forty pounds at a time. Opening them when we got home was like celebrating Christmas every week. To give us more incentive, Mum finally agreed to give us a cut of the takings rather than keeping it all for herself and to our shame we fell for it. We got greedier and greedier every time we got away with it, pushing more and more of the envelopes into our underpants every week.
After a year or so, the vicar noticed that his takings were badly down and worked out that we were by far the most likely source of the shortfall. One Sunday there was a different vicar conducting the service, but Thomas and I didn’t take much notice until the usual one appeared behind us, tapped us both on the shoulder after the collection had been taken and asked us to step outside halfway through the visiting priest’s sermon. It turned out they had been watching us without us realizing and had seen every move we’d made. Thomas had chickened out that week so I had nicked his share as well, and I hadn’t even bothered to push it into my underpants. I’d grown so cocky about the whole operation I’d just stuffed the booty into my pocket.
‘We know that money has been going missing,’ the vicar told us once he got us outside. His voice was calm but firm, as if he was very sure of his facts.
‘What you trying to say, you prick?’ I demanded while Thomas was stuttering and stammering around in a blind panic
‘I want you to empty your pockets,’ the vicar continued patiently, choosing to ignore my aggression.
‘You’ve no right to search us,’ I said, climbing up onto my high horse.
‘In that case,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m calling the police.’
‘Have you seen us stealing anything?’ I challenged him.
‘No, but we know a number of our members’ donations have been going missing.’
‘Maybe it was the church clerk who nicked them,’ I suggested.
‘No, Joe, it wasn’t.’
I kept arguing for as long as I could, desperately hoping something would occur to me before I had to empty my pockets and be exposed.
‘Empty your pockets,’ I commanded Thomas, my voice brimming with righteous indignation at being so falsely accused. ‘Just to show him you’ve got nothing.’
In the split second that the vicar was distracted by Thomas’s movements I transferred the envelopes from my pocket to my underpants, almost castrating myself on the sharp edges in the process. Once he had seen that Thomas had nothing he turned to me.
‘Nothing in my pockets,’ I said cheerfully, turning them inside out and praying none of the envelopes would work their way down my trouser leg while I was still standing in front of him.
‘Fair enough, lads,’ he said, nodding for us to go. I could see he knew what was going on but had decided not to pursue it any further just then. As I walked gingerly away I must have looked as though I’d had an accident in my pants. When I got home I told Mum that we were going to have to pack the scam in because the vicar was onto us, which did not please her.
That evening he came knocking and told Mum that he didn’t want Thomas or me in his church any more.
‘Why?’ she asked, her eyes wide with innocence, as if this was the first she’d heard of any problem. ‘What have they done?’
‘They’ve been stealing money from the collections,’ he told her gently, as if worried about shocking the poor, dear woman with such shameful news about her own children.
She gave a wonderful performance, saying she couldn’t believe what she was hearing and clipped us round the ear in front of him, despite us squealing our innocence and accusing the church clerk of being the culprit. The vicar seemed satisfied that justice had been done.
‘Thank you for sorting them out,’ he said. ‘Obviously you are welcome in the church any time, but not them.’
Mum didn’t bother with the church any more after that and Thomas and I got another beating for being greedy and taking too much money.
‘But you’ve been spending it!’ I protested, my courage growing a little more with each confrontation, but she didn’t want to hear anything from me – she just wanted to vent her anger at losing such a good source of income.
I went back to the care home the following day, nursing my latest bruises, but then she came round to apologize and promise yet another fresh start if I came home. So yet again I allowed her to sway me and went back.
She moved on from sending us to church to sending us on shoplifting expeditions, giving us very specific instructions about what to get for her. Clothing was a favourite and she would tell us exactly what sizes to go for. Thomas and I became expert shoplifters, stuffing things into our rucksacks that she could sell down the pub later the same day. We would steal pots and pans or toys or anything she wanted. She soon realized that she could turn a better profit from flogging our ill-gotten gains than she could from our car-washing business and she became more and more ambitious in her demands. Thomas and I were walking past a bike shop with her one time and she nodded towards some bikes that were on display outside.
‘I want them,’ s
he said. ‘All four of them.’
I couldn’t see how Thomas and I were going to get away with two each so we had to recruit a couple of friends and persuade them it would be a lark. We plucked up our courage while we were out of sight and then made a run for it, grabbing the bikes from their stands and riding off, laughing as the irate shopkeeper shouted after us. I never liked stealing, but it was better than being beaten by Mum and it always set the adrenaline rushing. Apart from wanting to avoid a beating for disobeying her orders, I wanted to do things to please her, to win her love, to try to prove that just because I was Dad’s favourite she didn’t have to hate me forever. I was her son too and I was willing to do whatever she asked within reason to gain her love.
I only ever got caught shoplifting once, in Woolworths. I was with Thomas but he had managed to get away before I was grabbed. I was terrified when the store detective who had caught me said he was going to ring Mum. That was a much more frightening prospect than having to deal with the police. I pleaded for mercy but it had no effect and in the end the store manager called both the police and Mum. Yet again I was trapped in a room with my eyes on the floor, unable to say anything in my defence because Mum was standing right beside me, listening to every word. The police asked the manager if he wanted to press charges.
Joe Peters Page 19